


it's a long way down (to the bottom of the river)

by toli-a (togina)



Category: Justified
Genre: 1989/1990, Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, M/M, Possessive Behavior, possibly murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-10-29 07:53:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17804033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togina/pseuds/toli-a
Summary: They’re still holding hands, hours after they get out of the mine.





	it's a long way down (to the bottom of the river)

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on tumblr. Some lovely anon asked for an AU where Boyd leaves with Raylan, and instead I wrote Boyd committing manslaughter and possibly murder. Title from Delta Rae's "Bottom of the River."

They’re still holding hands, hours after they get out of the mine. Well, that’s not quite right. They wrenched apart somewhere out of the elevator, manhandled and embraced and pounded on the back with rough affection by every man in their crew. Every man who’d come out alive. Boyd refuses to think about the men still down the shaft—already dead, if they’re lucky, buried alive if they ain’t.

Martin Pruitt had gotten pinned by a slab feet away from where they’d been digging. Raylan had tried to stop. Raylan had tried to bend down and pull Martin Pruitt loose from his own grave.

Boyd had hauled him away. Boyd had grabbed Raylan’s hand so tight that the bones might have ground to dust. He’d dragged Raylan down the tunnel until Pruitt’s screams were swallowed up by the thunder of the mountain caving in. Boyd had run and he’d carried Raylan away with him and he doesn’t regret it, Raylan breathing beside him, Raylan who’d let Boyd climb into his truck and regain his hold on Raylan’s free hand.

Boyd killed a man today.

He’d do it again.

He squeezes Raylan’s hand just to feel it and Raylan winces, tightens his other hand around the steering wheel and looks over at Boyd, red eyes and coal dust thick on his face, streaked down his neck.

“I ain’t going back,” Raylan declares hoarsely, and Boyd hears his voice and feels a rush of triumph, feels like God Almighty must have felt on the sixth day. _I did that_ , he thinks, savagely proud. _I made it so that Raylan Givens could speak. I’m the air in his lungs. I’m the reason he’s alive._ His fingers are going to leave bruises on Raylan’s hand, but Raylan doesn’t pull away.

“We ain’t neither of us going back in that mine, nor any other,” Boyd proclaims, with the surety of an angel from on high. “Never again.”

Raylan shakes his head. He keeps glancing over at Boyd, long, inscrutable glances, the way he’s looked at Boyd since they were fifteen or maybe before. Sometimes Raylan stops and gazes at Boyd like he’s waiting on Boyd for something, like there’s a puzzle and it’s Boyd who’s got the missing piece. Boyd doesn’t much appreciate being on the outside of any secret, especially if that secret belongs to Raylan.

“No,” Raylan says, peering at the road and then staring, unblinking, at Boyd. “I mean I ain’t going back to Harlan. Aunt Helen gave me money to get out, and I’m going. I ain’t passing another night in this hell of a place.”

Raylan fires off the words like shots from a machine gun, then stops, leaves the sound of all those words ringing in Boyd’s ears, ricocheting in the cab around them. Boyd can feel the pulse beating through Raylan’s hand.

For perhaps the first time in his life, Boyd Crowder can’t form words. _No_ , he wants to shout. Or, _You can’t leave_. Or, _Was it thirty pieces of silver, that Helen gave you?_ Or, deeper than all of that: _I killed a man today. I left him to die and I put the air in your lungs and I put you in this truck, breathing. You don’t get to leave, Raylan Givens. Those are my fingerprints on your hand. Mine._

Raylan steers the truck over to the side of the road. He twists in his seat and watches Boyd. “I suspect you broke my hand,” Raylan says into the silence, keeps his impenetrable gaze on Boyd. Raylan has eyes the color of gasoline, a mole high up on his cheek and another at the corner of his jaw. Raylan’s eyes could set the world on fire. Boyd knows every inch of Raylan Givens’s face. He’s cataloged every detail, time and again, noted each change, from Raylan’s first lost tooth in Kindergarten to his last haircut a week before to his morning shave. Raylan sits there, staring at Boyd, because Boyd let Martin Pruitt die.

“I’ll do a lot more than that,” Boyd swears, his own voice gritty, “you try to leave.”

Boyd wants to hit Raylan, suddenly, wants to start a fight and work himself free of the barbed wire that wrapped around his chest when Raylan started saying his goodbyes. He would, too, if it didn’t mean letting go of Raylan’s hand.

“I killed a man,” Boyd tells him, and watches the fuel in Raylan’s eyes catch fire.

“You’ll have to kill me to keep me here,” Raylan says, leans back and looks Boyd dead in the eye. “Are you willing to do that?”

_Yes_ , Boyd answers, flint and pitch lighting the word. He wraps his free hand around Raylan’s coal-smudged throat, Raylan’s pulse fast as a hummingbird’s wings under his thumb. He tightens his grip, imagines his fingerprints as a necklace tattooed into Raylan’s pale skin. Raylan tilts his head back and swallows, lets Boyd feel the pressure of it against the palm of his hand.

“Well?” Raylan demands, his voice a vibration against Boyd’s hand. And Boyd wants to press down, wants to curl his fingers into Raylan’s skin and _take_ until there’s nothing left, until there’s no part of Raylan that isn’t Boyd’s.

“You ain’t leaving,” Boyd says, low, his hand still clasped around Raylan’s throat, his fingerprints darkening on Raylan’s hand.

“Either come with me,” Raylan challenges him, “or make me stay.” And he presses forward, into Boyd’s tightening grasp, presses his neck into the curve of Boyd’s hand and lets Boyd push his fingertips deep into Raylan’s skin.

Boyd killed a man today.

_Mine_ , he thinks, and Raylan lifts his chin and watches Boyd, unblinking, eyes lit with that same knowing gaze. He leans in.

* * *

Boyd Crowder and Raylan Givens survive the Joseph’s Valley Mine collapse, everyone knows, unlike poor Martin Pruitt who died before the rescue crews came. The boys survived. But no one in Harlan County lays eyes on either the eldest Crowder son or the Givens get, after that day. Neither boy is ever seen again.


End file.
